Curator and space historian at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum delivers a
brilliantly nuanced biography of controversial space pioneer Wernher von Braun. Chief rocket
engineer of the Third Reich and one of the fathers of the U.S. space program Wernher von Braun
is a source of consistent fascination. Glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal
he was a man of profound moral complexities whose intelligence and charisma were coupled with
an enormous and some would say blinding ambition. Based on new sources Neufeld's biography
delivers a meticulously researched and authoritative portrait of the creator of the V-2 rocket
and his times detailing how he was a man caught between morality and progress between his
dreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.
